


Ashes, ashes

by abrokenkindofperfect (hockeycaptains)



Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ghosts, Kate is back from the dead (kind of) and ready to wreak havoc, Possession, warnings for too much fire imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 16:44:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeycaptains/pseuds/abrokenkindofperfect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison hasn't been the same since the sacrifice - none of them have, not really.  The only difference is she keeps her mouth shut about it.  Cue a visit from her dear, dead aunt, escapades she can't remember, and too many thoughts about Derek's skin and the way he tastes like sin.</p><p>or</p><p>Kate is dead but she’s still electric when she speaks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes, ashes

Her name is Allison and sometimes she wakes up with demons on her tongue. She fights them with fire and arrows. She hasn’t missed a shot since she was nine years old, and sometimes that feels like the only thing that matters at all.

The bow is comfort and sin, routine and ruthlessness. The string arches like a curve of spine, and she plays it like a fiddle, fingers steady and eyes like gun sights. Surely you’ve seen her, in the woods with her hair pulled tight, every trace of girl scrubbed clean from her face. She is not a girl, not in these woods; no, she is a predator. Sometimes she wonders why she can’t be both, but those days are old and fading. Her silver-ringing smiles are tinged with bloodlust, now. The line of her shoulders is burdened with brutal purpose. Her laugh is rare. It doesn’t bother her. 

Her mother once told her _that’s your problem, Allison, you feel too much and think too little_. Kate once told her _have a little fun with it, won’t you? It’s okay to mix business and pleasure – I promise not to tell_. Her father once told her _you meddle too much; you get yourself into trouble. Teenagers these days think they’re invincible._

They never listened when she talked back, and so instead she caved right into her own ribcage like the aftermath of a supernova. Surely you’ve noticed the hunch of her heartache, the ache of her eyelids, the tremble in her tongue when she talks about love. A bit of introspection is good for the soul, but trap a girl inside herself for long enough and even the best of intentions are twisted into bitter. Even the most graceful hunter turns into a killer. When Allison thinks about beauty, she thinks clean shots and perfect storms and the burn of adrenaline at the end of a chase. She does not think roses. She does not think Chanel No. 5. 

Allison is in her car. The radio is state of the art, but she’s got the volume down low, and nearly misses the trumpet voice of the talk show host. “Let’s say, and just humor me here, folks, let’s say the world were to end tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” asks the other host, this voice stronger and decidedly female. It sounds like red lipstick and high stilettos, and Allison likes the tacky edge of sharpness, likes something about how unashamed this woman is. “That’s awfully soon, isn’t it?”

The first host, the male one, laughs. “Just go with it,” he says, tinny, “okay?”

“All right, all right. The world is ending tomorrow. Shame, that.”

“A real bummer. So, by tomorrow, everything is gone. All the people you loved, all the people you hated. The entire planet decimated, and you with it. No going back, no do-overs, no redemption. Nothing. Tell me, any regrets?”

Allison grips the gearshift with tight fingers, knuckles turning white under the stress, and then lets it go, uses that hand to shut off the radio altogether. She likes driving in the silence better, anyway, likes the hum of road beneath her. Maybe there’s some truth to the idea that you can run but you can’t hide, and she’d be okay with that. She always like running better, anyway, the rush of feet slamming the pavement and the nip and bite of cold air in her throat, in her lungs, in her core. There’s something about mornings. There’s something about the freedom, how animalistic it is.

She wants to shut her eyes except that always makes it worse. Trying not to remember is the hard part, she thinks, not the remembering itself. It’s easy to think about strong hands and wide, guarded eyes and the hum of betrayal that brought them together, no matter how twisted, no matter how wrong- but that’s just it, isn’t it? She’ll swear to her grave that she’s not shaking, but she pulls over anyway and cuts the engine.

“Damn it,” she says, too loud in the stillness, “damn it,” and slumps her head forward against the steering wheel. She aches for movement, for a hand running messily through her hair or the flurry of an arrow buried in the trunk of a tree, but she’s so tired, is the thing. The past months have not been kind. The nightmares wake her screaming in the middle of the night, and she never recognizes her own voice when they do. Her relationships are mottled with caveats and footnotes. Her mind won’t stop racing.

She thinks back to the radio host and the end of the world. 

_Any regrets?_

She has a few.

…

He puts his hands in his pockets and tugs his chin up and pretends he’s not afraid, grinds a cigarette butt under the heel of his foot because he hates things that have lost their purpose. Defiance and defeat live in tandem in his too-blue eyes. He’s forgotten the meaning of the word forgiveness.

(He’s a kid with a motorcycle jacket and scuffed up sneakers and an impressive set of fangs, nothing more.) 

His mother always said his hero complex would get him into trouble someday, but he doesn’t think it counts if he’s a version of himself she wouldn’t even recognize. 

(And anyway, he isn’t a hero. He just plays dress-up sometimes, ill-fitting cape and all. Nothing more.)

…

Allison has been thinking a lot about divinity, imagines that it sits in the crevices of burning houses and only reveals itself once it’s gone up in flames. Kate grins, flicks some hair over shoulder, and things are just like they were for one blessed moment. “Charming, right? Drop your bow and pick up a flamethrower, come on, I dare you.” Kate is dead but she’s still electric when she speaks. “I’ll teach you, it’ll be a blast. Just like old times, Allison, what d’ya say?”

It’s disconcerting at best, but after a while Allison’s nearly gotten used to Kate following her around and commenting on her thoughts, egging her on. Allison has been thinking a lot about fire. She doesn’t think that it’s a coincidence. The worst part is that it hurts like a bruise that’s been prodded too much, because Allison misses Kate, even after everything. They were like sisters, and Allison feels too much and doesn’t think enough, and it’s so hard to reconcile Kate the Best Friend with Kate the Murderer.

“No,” says Allison, regaining her bearings, checking over her shoulder to make sure she’s still alone, “that’s not going to happen.”

There’s a gleam in Kate’s eyes that’s just shy of contemplative. “Who knows,” she drawls, speech thick and slow with confidence, “maybe it will.” Something about Kate has always been inherently sexual, like she burns from the inside out, and her eyes are dark and predatory where they land on Allison. “It’d be so easy to just let me in.”

Allison shakes her head because she doesn’t understand, because she’s afraid, because Kate has been saying this since day one and Allison hasn’t gotten any closer to figuring out what she means. “You aren’t even real,” she tries, “you’re in my head.”

“Not yet,” says Kate, “but I will be. Soon, too. I can feel it. Can you feel it, Allison?”

She can feel it, she thinks, humming in the air, the ash on her tongue and the embers under her skin, around her neck like a vice. She can’t touch it, but it’s everywhere, just waiting to break in. Allison doesn’t know what will happen when it does; she hunts, but Kate is the type to go for the kill. Allison is lithe but Kate is made of knife points and whip cracks. Allison is skilled and compassionate but Kate strikes for the sake of ruin.

Kate is dead but she’s still winning. Allison has forgotten how not to be afraid.

…

In his dreams, she’s always screaming. 

…

In her dreams, she can’t move a single muscle.

…

He finds her on her knees at the edge of the tree line, staring blindly at her hands. There is dirt and blood caked under her fingernails, like she’d just clawed herself out of her own grave, and the twist of her mouth isn’t so pronounced as it should be, all things considered. “How did you know,” she says, without looking up, and her voice is as pretty as ever but it’s toneless, inflectionless, the voice of a burn victim, “how did you know I was here.”

He takes her in. Hair matted down and mud streaked across her sweet alabaster skin, she’s a complete wreck. She looks like she does in his dreams, except for her behavior, except for the touch of defeat seeping from her pores. Right now she’s completely docile, like a doll. It isn’t a good look on her, and he wants to sneer, wants to rub it in her face that she’s only beautiful when she’s killing something, she’s only graceful as a predator. Instead, he schools his features. “Your scent.” She cocks an eyebrow, looking faintly intrigued and more than a little condescending and nothing at all like herself. “It’s wrong,” he explains, but that’s as far as he’ll go. If he continues any further he might end up saying too much, and that never goes well for him. Better to sew his own mouth shut than have it sewn shut for him.

Allison’s eyes widen, then, like a trapped animal’s, and her hands go to clutch at her head, at her waist, at anything they can hold onto. She looks like she wants to tear her hair out by the root. (Derek thinks he would let her.) It’s like something’s snapped. 

Her breaths are harsh and wild. “Derek, Derek you- she’s- god,” and it sounds like she’s choking. He does the first thing he can think of, and grips her wrists, holds them down at her sides. He isn’t afraid but he could be getting there; they thought this kind of thing would be over by now – the odd behavior, the nightmares, the poison in the air – but it appears they were wrong.

“Get yourself together,” he says, low and firm, and he watches her slowly decompress. By the time it’s over, and the tension has dripped from her limbs and the taut skin of her forehead, she’s collapsing straight into his arms. He pretends he wouldn’t rip her apart, given the chance, and pulls her as close as he can, like he can piece her together himself if he only tries hard enough. “Allison,” he murmurs, and she shudders once, twice, goes limp. All right, he thinks. All right.

He drives her home and carries her through the window, gentler than he ever has when she’s awake. She’s still a mess, still torn up, but she’s beautiful, he can admit it. He always knew the Argent family was bad news, but this is different. He sees and he wants her and all he can think about is Kate.

Allison is headstrong and fiercely protective of her family and not above underhanded plays. Allison has knockout legs and coquettish lashes and she knows it, she knows it, she knows it. 

Derek remembers crashing into her like sin, the way he bit his lip so hard he tasted rust. Remembers the exact tone of her voice, the exact way she writhed on the bed. She’d tasted like a one night stand and she’d held him like a lover. He’d tell her he was sorry if he thinks he could muster up emotion to feel it, but as it stands all he wants is to do it again, to rough her up and ruin her the way she ruins him. She understands. She knows.

He pauses only a second more before leaving the house, and the stench of mountain ash with it.

…

“What’s happening to me?” Allison asks her reflection, hands gripping each edge of the sink like it’s a life preserver, eyes imploring, jaw locked in fear.

Kate just smiles behind her like the cat who got the canary. “Stiles isn’t the only one who can open doors,” she purrs.

…

She starts leaving her bow at home when the blackouts start. She always ends up back in her own bed, never sure how she got there. She’s always covered in grime and blood. Her blood, she hopes, and not someone else’s (not an innocent’s), but there’s no way of finding out.

Derek hangs in her periphery sometimes. He’s never close enough to touch, and Allison pretends she’s okay with that, with him hovering over her shoulder the way he used to. One lapse in judgment is enough, she tells herself.

She adamantly does not think about the taste of his skin.

Kate laughs.

…

Scott confronts Derek three days after the fifth time Allison is found in the woods. It’d been Chris, that time, armed with guns and good intentions, and Derek is glad, because he doesn’t like to face Allison when she’s so despondent, so lost-looking. It has nothing to do with the embers in her eyes. It has nothing to do with her arsonist’s fingers. It has nothing to do with the fact that she lights him up like a torch, he swears, he needs you to believe him.

Scott says, "She looks like she's seen a ghost."

Scott says, "She's not the same. It's like she isn't the same person, it's like someone took her from us and replaced her with this."

Scott says, "She hasn't texted me in a month, what does that mean?"

Derek says, "Leave her alone," and doesn't register the words until they're out of his mouth. He doesn't bother taking them back, and stalks off immediately after, leaving Scott like a fish with his mouth open too wide, stunned beyond response. It's better that way, thinks Derek, childish. Scott is a boy. Scott is in over his head, and he doesn't even know what that means, yet; he doesn't know a single thing.

...

It's been a week since the last time he's seen Allison. Derek feels - he feels fine, sure, since Allison doesn't matter to him and he hasn't bothered worrying about an Argent since his family burned to ash because of one (because of him, he thinks, it's his own damn fault, but he doesn't bother trying to fight). The problem is that Allison isn't okay, and her lips are like crescendos, and Derek has held her in his arms more since she started losing her mind than he ever had before, even when-

He isn't supposed to think about that. (They agreed, one time thing, no questions asked, just lust and lust and lust, but something hummed through his veins and he isn't so sure it was blood).

It's just that Allison walks like she's got someone riding on her back, and-

She hasn't really talked to anyone in weeks, and-

Derek isn't worried, but she seems like she's ripping apart at the seams, and he knows he can't be the only one noticing it but it seems like he's the only one doing anything about it, and-

He knows Scott tried, he knows others have probably tried, too, but-

It feels like she's his responsibility, is all.

He owes her something. He doesn't know why, or what, but maybe this could settle the debt he feels crushing him. He hates her by proxy. Maybe that's enough reason to feel guilty. Maybe that's enough.

...

Allison kills Kate on a Thursday, and it's the first time she wakes up in the woods alone.

"Whose blood is this?" she asks, and Kate just smirks, shrugs her shoulders, like it's all a game. Kate never loses. Even when she dies, she wins. (Not this time.) "I asked you a question," says Allison, and the rage under her skin is the first thing in weeks to feel entirely her own. Her hands are hers, her mouth hers, "who blood is this?"

"Does it matter?" Kate is still smiling, and Allison snaps.

The moon is half-full, dazzling the ground with splotches of light, and Allison launches herself forward like a feral creature, like a girl possessed, and she doesn't miss the irony that sits sweet on her tongue. She _rips_ , feels skin ash bone ash air come apart in her stained hands. Kate is wheezing, laughing, desperate and pathetic.

"He never loved you," says Kate, and Allison isn't thinking about Scott, "he fucked you and he was thinking about _me_ the entire time." Kate is dissolving into the air but she's still smiling like a loon, and Allison tears the grin right off of her face.

The entire thing is messy and grotesque from start to finish, Allison grunting and screaming and slashing, Allison finally recognizing her own body, Allison taking back control and using it to kill, kill, kill.

She is not a girl, no, not in these woods; here, she is a predator, and the glint in her eye is vengeance and fury.

She wonders if this is a bad idea, thinks _any regrets?_

Not one, she thinks, as the last of Kate slips ugly between her fingers like wolf-claws. Not one.

...

Derek watches from the edge of the woods, not daring to approach. Allison is a whirlwind of motion and destruction. The only hint Derek gets of why she's fighting at all are the drops and splatters of blood that coat the old ones - they seem to be coming out of thin air, but Allison is smiling an unbalanced and dangerous smile as she goes.

She's laughing, and it's an awful sound. She's finally gone mad, thinks Derek, and this is what he's been waiting for, what he's been dreading. She's lost it, and he couldn't save her. She's lost it.

Derek turns around, walks home, and steadily does not think about the fact that everything he touches (everything he _loves_ , alright, he's man enough to say it, he loves her, _damn it_ ) turns to rot and ash in time. Allison has been damaged beyond repair. Allison is too far gone to ever get back, and it's Derek's fault.

He doesn't look back, as he walks away, and he doesn't get to see the expression on her face as she lets loose a wail so primal it sends shivers down his spine. She's good at that, sending shivers down his spine.

He thinks with the saddest kind of amusement that it must run in the family.


End file.
